Fake You Out
by collegefangirl3791
Summary: Steve hasn't felt right ever since waking up from the ice. Sometimes he can't feel anything at all. That all changes when he meets Natalie Rushman, a cashier at his favorite diner. She becomes his best friend, then something more, but what he doesn't realize is that she is not at all what she seems to be.
1. Chapter 1

_I'm so afraid  
_ _Of what you have to say  
_ _'Cause I am quiet now  
_ _And silence gives you space_

 _I'll never be, be what you see inside_  
 _You say I'm not alone, but I am petrified_  
 _You say that you are close, is close the closest star?_  
 _You just feel twice as far, you just feel twice as far_

Chapter 1

Steve Rogers parked his car in the usual spot outside Benny's Diner, grimacing as he eased his way out of the front seat and opened the side door to grab his crutches.

He'd had a mission today with his partner, an impatient, brusque field agent named Grant Ward. Ward wasn't particularly helpful, only telling Steve the bare minimum of what he needed to know for each mission and making it clear that he found the Captain's presence to be a burden. Steve had done well today, better than usual, at helping get intel, and Ward had come close to complimenting him. That had been before a downed opponent shot Steve in the thigh.

The bullet hit the outside of his leg and passed through, damaging a muscle (Steve didn't know enough technical terms to remember which one, but he thought it had been the vastus something-or-other). The SHIELD medics told him he'd have trouble extending that leg until the damage healed, gave him a pair of crutches, strongly advised against taking stairs or doing most any other activity that would require his leg to have to work much, and forced him to take paid leave from missions for three weeks at least. (They hedged on the amount of time – each medic had a different guess – due to his serum. Steve didn't listen to any of their guesses.)

Steve was trying to take their advice, he really was, but he hated crutches, he hated taking down time, he hated _stopping_. Until his leg healed, his life would be days and days of nothing. He had no friends, no hobbies, no life except his memories. Sometimes he considered trying to get Tony Stark's contact information – at least the billionaire might be willing to talk every once and a while.

The diner door jingled obnoxiously as Steve juggled with his crutches and tried to push it open. To his chagrin, he failed, and one of the employees (the new girl, red hair, short and slim) had to come open it. Humiliated, he hobbled through the doorway, nodding at her. "Thanks."

"No problem," she said lightly. "You okay?"

He didn't even think before answering anymore. "Yeah, fine. Just a muscle sprain."

"Alright. You want your usual?"

He had a usual now. It felt almost nice, like he belonged somewhere. Was that pathetic? Definitely. Steve was past caring. "Yeah, thanks."

The employee let go of the door and sauntered back behind the counter, and Steve sighed and eased himself into the nearest booth. Sitting down and letting his leg go limp felt so good – he let out another, deeper sigh and reached into the pocket of his leather jacket for his notebook and pen.

Half the notebook was full of notes on the modern world – things people said he had to read watch, eat, play, listen to, or explore. The other half held his doodles and sketches from the past few months. The pages of the journal crackled as he turned them, searching for an empty page to draw on.

"Here you go, Captain Rogers."

He looked up, instinctively pushing his notebook to the side. The employee held out a tray of food, smiling. Steve mustered up a grin of his own and accepted the tray, setting it down carefully in front of him. To his surprise, however, the woman didn't walk away. Steve didn't know a lot about modern societal norms yet, but he didn't think this was something employees were supposed to do.

"Do you need something?" he asked, as politely as he could.

"Are you sure you're okay?"

Steve looked up, frowning, and gave the woman a more careful once-over. She wasn't flirting, he was pretty sure, and something about the way she asked (unassuming, in an almost motherly tone, like she felt responsible for him) made him want to answer her honestly for once.

He didn't, though. "Yeah, promise."

She surprised him further by raising an eyebrow, shaking her head at him, and saying offhandedly, "That's on the house. Can't have word getting around that we charge so much for a crippled old man to have dinner."

Steve didn't catch himself in time to stop his mouth dropping open in shock. Nobody had talked to him like that in the longest time, except Stark, and Stark did it like he was angry. This was light-hearted, friendly, _normal_.

He didn't have time to answer before the employee smirked, turned around, and strode away, leaving him trying desperately thinking of a way to protest both her teasing and her generosity without making a fool of himself.

Giving up after a few more seconds of embarrassed staring, he turned his attention to his meal and dug into the first of four burgers.

He had to eat a lot to keep from feeling empty, thanks to his accelerated metabolism. He wished he could blame all his emptiness on the serum. That would make everything easier.

…

Over the next few weeks, he gave up on fixing his own meals and instead went to the diner every day or bought his meals pre-packaged at the store. The red-haired employee's name was Natalie. She was the only one at the diner who treated him like a normal person. He told himself he did this because he wasn't a good cook and he'd become too reliant on SHIELD's cafeteria food.

He didn't want to admit that he was afraid of how empty and quiet his apartment was.

He didn't want to admit that Natalie's teasing made him feel like he had a friend.

An interviewer had once asked him "How's life now that you're awake?" and Steve had wanted to say "Pathetic. I'm pathetic. I don't fit." But he said "It's great!" and smiled like the dancing monkey he'd turned himself into.

Natalie seemed to have taken it upon herself to make sure he was taking care of himself. She was probably breaking all kinds of rules with how much she pestered him about his personal life, but nobody had treated him like this since Bucky, nobody had _cared_ , so Steve indulged her questions. Admitted that no, he hadn't eaten anything home-made since a week ago, yes, he mostly ate diner food and frozen dinners, no, he wasn't getting outside enough, yes, he was probably not taking it easy enough on his leg.

He tried to pretend that Natalie wasn't the only thing keeping him from collapsing in on himself like a structurally unsound skyscraper because she was a _diner employee_ , not a friend.

She asked him what it was like having to save the world, her mouth twisting in a sardonic smirk like she knew the kind of answer he'd give. Like she knew that he hated fighting as much as she hated Mondays.

She was beautiful. He'd noticed that right away but at some point he'd stopped caring what people looked like, good or bad. He'd stopped caring about most things.

He still didn't. It was just that sometimes he liked her eyes because she looked at him as if she _knew how he felt_ and of course she didn't, how could she, but he felt so alone and he had nothing in his life but going to the diner and trying to watch all the Star Wars movies and trying to rest his leg so he could work again.

Maybe he was starting to become too dependent on her. If only she wouldn't treat him the way she did, like he was just like everyone else (except his age and history gave her things to tease him about), he could stop being so desperate to talk to her.

Steve was angry enough at himself about the whole thing that as soon as he could go an entire day without the crutches (three weeks after the injury), he went in to SHIELD. They gave him a three-day mission with Brock Rumlow's strike team, and the return to the familiar (fighting through pain, muscular exertion, throwing his shield, senses on the alert) was a relief. He hadn't realized how much he needed to do these things until he was forced to give them up.

He didn't miss Natalie, per se, but he did miss her conversation. SHIELD agents weren't good at "normal."

After that mission, he resolved he wouldn't go back to the diner. There was no way Natalie actually liked having someone like him hanging around all the time, and he'd probably gotten her in trouble. He needed to be better than this.

…

It was a Thursday night. Steve was at home in his apartment, which was so sparsely decorated that to call it "minimalistic" would have been generous. He was planning to have a pizza delivered (whoever had come up with that concept was a genius) and sit down for a movie.

He did not expect Natalie to show up at his door fifteen minutes before the pizza delivery boy did.

His first reaction upon seeing her in the hallway outside his door was suspicion. People weren't supposed to have his address. Not that it would be hard to figure out, but all the same. He crossed his arms and frowned, blocking the doorway. "What are you doing here?"

Natalie winced. She looked strangely small now, as if when they had been on equal footing he hadn't noticed her height as much. But here, at his apartment, where Natalie most certainly was not supposed to be, Steve was sizing her up as a threat, which made a huge difference. "I am so sorry, Captain Rogers," she said, looking down. "I don't mean to intrude, honestly, I just… um…"

"How'd you get this address?" Steve asked sternly, interrupting.

She nodded. "I really am sorry, I promise. You've gotten food delivered from the diner a few times, so I bribed the usual delivery guy to give it to me."

"Okay. Why?"

He waited while Natalie paused, staring at the floor and twisting her hands together. Then she said, in a rush, "I need help with something in my apartment."

Steve wasn't sure what he'd been expecting, but it certainly wasn't that. "What?" He relaxed his stance a bit.

She let out a shame-faced laugh. "I have to install a new faucet and counter on my bathroom sink and I can't do it myself. And I mean, I know you're a customer and a superhero and everything, but you're my only friend and I didn't have anyone else to ask."

 _Her friend…_ Steve had to fight not to smile. "I have pizza on the way, now's not a great time…"

Natalie nodded. "Okay. Can you help another time though?"

The pleading look in her green eyes was melting his soul. Maybe it wouldn't be such a good idea to go to her house when he barely knew her, but she actually seemed to need him. And anyway, what could a woman this small do to him?

"I guess. Could I have your phone number?" _That was forward of you, Steve, damnit._ "I mean, if you want, I just meant I could call you when I'm free-"

Natalie laughed, socking him in the shoulder. Her blow was stronger than he'd have expected. "Yes, you can have my phone number, Captain."

"You know," Steve said, and it was pathetic how daring he felt about saying this, but in this new century things felt more precarious, "if I'm your only friend, maybe you could just call me Steve."

He shouldn't have worried, of course: Natalie grinned, her eyes a mix of relieved and triumphant, and nodded. "Well alright then, Steve. I'll write my number down, if you have some paper…"

"Oh, right. Here, you can step inside for a second." Steve regretted the decision to let her in as soon as he turned around. The empty apartment glared at him, and he just knew his loneliness must be written all over the bare walls. Nobody with a good life had a house this… this… well, like everything else about him, this pathetic. He coughed a little. "Sorry, I haven't really had a good time to fix this place up. Too busy saving the world, you know."

He knew his smile was thin, and he knew that Natalie knew it too. But she nodded at him, smiling. "Can't blame you."

His notebook was on the kitchen counter, so he picked it up and pulled open a drawer to get out a pen. "Here."

She took the notebook and pen and scribbled down a series of numbers. "Thanks again for this," she said. "I know it's stupid, but-"

"It isn't stupid," he said quickly. "I'm happy to help."

She looked down, smiling and biting her lip, and Steve felt a pleased warmth spreading through his chest like hot cocoa.

If this was what it was like to have a friend again, it might be worth all this embarrassment.

…

He lectured himself the entire way to her apartment on what a terrible idea the whole thing was. This was probably going to be a trap and there would be a supervillain waiting in her apartment to blow him up and she would laugh at how naïve he was. But it was also possible that his first instinct had been right, and that Natalie was someone he could trust. So despite his misgivings and the number of times he called himself an idiot, he kept driving to the address she'd given him.

Knocking on her door felt like a monumental step. Maybe it was, in a way. Everything in this century was so much harder for him. It was as if the whole world was challenging him, "Come on, I bet you can't do this. I'd like to see you try."

So when she opened the door and she was already smiling he had a long-dormant urge to pump his fist and say something back at the world because he'd _done something._ He'd made a step. Maybe now there could be more to his life than fighting and coming back to an empty apartment. He wasn't sure what he wanted anymore, but he did know he wanted more than what he had now.

"Thank you so much for this," Natalie said again, stepping aside so he could walk into her apartment. Unlike his, she'd apparently put some effort into making hers homey. Cute knick-knacks shaped like birds and trees perched on the shelves and tables, there were brightly colored decorative pillows on the couch, and several large, interesting paintings (also of birds and trees) adorned the walls. Steve tried not to spend too long looking at the paintings, but he was intrigued by the artistic style. Maybe he could get a better look later.

"No problem," he said, belatedly. Trust him to get distracted by someone's decor. He smiled sheepishly.

"The bathroom's this way."

Steve tried to review what he'd read on the internet about modern plumbing and counter installation and was disgruntled to discover that despite his photographic memory he'd managed to forget most of what he'd learned.

That didn't end up mattering, because it quickly became clear that Natalie was going to be doing most of the technical work and he was there to lift the marble countertop and help with the physical side of things. She bossed him around easily, to the point where he found himself opening up, daring to be a bit sassy. She responded by smacking his arm and informing him that he was a jerk.

That hurt a little. It was so stupid that an insult could remind him of Bucky, but he found his smile fading and he cursed himself because he had to _be better than this_.

Natalie touched his arm again, but carefully this time. "I'm sorry. Did I say something wrong?"

He shook his head emphatically. He couldn't ruin this now. "It's fine, honest."

"No it isn't," she said, matter-of-factly. "You always say that and it never is."

Steve didn't know whether to be upset that she'd said that or grateful. Either way, his problems weren't hers to worry about. "Things are… different now," he said, carefully. "Sometimes I forget."

Natalie eyed him appraisingly, then suddenly her gaze went back to the countertop and she said "Move that a bit to the right."

For a few minutes he thought maybe she was mad at him, but when she called him an old man and stuck her tongue out at him, he was glad to see she wasn't.

…

After he helped Natalie install her sink, it was as if some kind of unspoken line had been crossed. She started asking him if he wanted to come to movies with her, or go have lunch, or go to the park, and (hesitantly, because Steve hadn't exactly been friends with a woman before) he started asking her to do things with him too. He realized that she didn't have any friends or family either, and although he felt guilty for it, he was a little relieved. Maybe she needed him as much as he needed her.

She was horrified with how little SHIELD had bothered to explain about him about the modern world, so she took him shopping for a new phone and some clothes (she said he dressed like a grandpa). One day she was digging through his cabinets for a cup and ended up lecturing him on " _why don't you have any dishes, you idiot, you need to eat real food, one fork and some knives doesn't count as adequate silverware, and why don't you have dishwasher soap, you have to take advantage of the fact that something does your dishes for you, and for heaven's sakes get a frying pan why don't you even have a frying pan?_ " So they went to the grocery store and she loaded things in his cart, lecturing him the whole time.

It took him the longest time to begin telling her anything, despite how open she sometimes was. She told him how lonely she was. She told him how she'd lost her parents when she was seven and had to survive on the streets by herself for the next ten years. She told him about her abusive relationship with her Russian former husband.

The strange thing about her, Steve decided, was she was incredibly good at reading emotions in other people and very quick to call him out when he was lying, but she herself didn't seem to have an emotional connection to the things she told him – or actually, anything else. She could be fun and sassy and perceptive, but he never once saw her get angry or sad or confused. It was like she simply couldn't express emotion. Maybe she was too guarded from her past, maybe she was afraid of more abuse.

That was part of why Steve was afraid to start sharing about himself. What if he only made everything harder for her? What if, after all this, she still only wanted to be his friend because he was Captain America?

If Steve had been left to himself, he might never have shared anything about himself with her, but fortunately somebody out there had other ideas.

Natalie convinced him to go on a walk in the park with her on a chilly November day with overcast skies. Steve tried to argue that it was in the forties and threatening to storm, but Natalie told him he was being a baby and dragged him out into the frigid wind anyway.

Steve was shivering but managing fine in his well-lined leather jacket. Natalie was surprisingly unaffected – when he asked her why she wasn't cold, she shrugged. "I'm just better with this kind of weather."

Steve huffed a laugh. "I'm not."

She glanced at him. "Yeah, I guess you wouldn't be. Sorry."

Walking faster, almost unconsciously, Steve nodded. He didn't like the way she'd said that, but of course everyone knew how his life had gone, knew what would scare him. "It isn't like that. I just like summer."

She laughed, and everything seemed okay again. "You would, you big softie." She elbowed him, he elbowed her, and she angled towards him and bumped into him, giggling.

The wind picked up then, gusting leaves past their feet, and Steve's heart sank as a few cold droplets of water splashed onto his hands. Almost before he'd registered this, the sky split open and chilly rain poured out of the clouds.

They were drenched in seconds. Steve managed to gallantly pass Natalie his more waterproof jacket before they broke into a run, trying to get out of the rain. But it was so cold, and Steve wasn't wearing a jacket, and the rain and wind stung his eyes so he couldn't see, and suddenly he couldn't tell if he was in Washington, D.C., anymore or drowning in the Valkyrie. Even though he felt Natalie's hand on his, tugging him along, all he knew was cold and water and wind and what if he was dying again, what if he had never been safe, what if, what if, what if-

He stopped in his tracks, felt the water streaming down his face and back, and shivered, trying to find Natalie again, trying to focus. She would be cold, they had to get inside - but he wasn't sure what was real anymore. He heard a crash of thunder and instinctively flinched away from the sound – except it was everywhere.

"Steve, please look at me!"

He struggled against a hold on his hand. It was Natalie, he knew it was Natalie, but she wouldn't let go and he couldn't do this. Something had to be done, he was going somewhere - what was happening?

"Steve! Oh, bozhe moi, I don't know what to do. Steve, listen to me, okay?"

He fought to focus, telling himself over and over again that it was fine, it was just rain. He shook his head and said, "I can't" and then an arm slipped around his waist and they were moving again, but now he just followed Natalie, blinking rain out of his eyes and shaking. At some point he registered the trees and the grass through the driving rain, so he put his own arm around her shoulder so she would know he was aware of his surroundings now, and they jogged together towards the nearest entrance to the park.

She took him to her car, sat him down, and shucked off his jacket, tossing it to him. The inner lining was still mostly dry, so he pulled it on. Natalie got in the car and turned it on, immediately pressing a number of buttons to blast the heat as hot as it would go.

"I'm sorry," he said, and his teeth clicked against each other and his clothes were chill against his skin. "I'm so sorry, Natalie, I didn't mean-"

"Shut up." She met his eyes challengingly, like she was daring him to disobey.

He wanted to. How could he have let her see that? How could he have let something so small get to him? He needed to tell her he was sorry, needed to tell her it was fine if she didn't want to stay. But he fell silent and clutched his jacket closer around himself.

Natalie drove him home to his apartment and marched him inside.

He couldn't get warm.

"Take a shower," Natalie ordered. "I'm going to make us some soup."

He did as she told him. He couldn't seem to find the energy to do anything else.

The warm water of the shower stabbed at his skin, warming him up – on the outside, at least. A cold knot remained in his stomach, however, and all he could think about was drowning, over and over again, how the icy water drained away his strength until he couldn't even be afraid anymore and he was just ready to die.

Steve quickly turned off the water and got out of the shower.

When he went back out into the kitchen, bundled up in a giant blue sweatshirt and a dry pair of jeans, Natalie was in the middle of fiercely dicing through two carrots, scooping up the pieces and dumping them into the large soup pot she'd forced him to buy. Other than the movement of her hands and arms, he had little indication as to her mood; her expression was blank. She could have been angry, concerned, sad, terrified, or happy, and he would have no way of knowing. From the way she was going at the carrots though, he suspected she was upset. She had every right to be.

He carefully walked over and gestured at the pot. "Do you need any help?"

She looked up, and her face smoothed into a concerned smile. "No, but thank you." She walked out from behind the counter, wiping her hands on her soaked jeans and gave him a damp hug.

She'd never hugged him before. It was a stilted and awkward embrace, and he wasn't sure if that was his fault or hers.

"Maybe I'll make us some hot cocoa," he said, pulling away. She nodded, and he sighed and turned around to reach into the cabinet where he kept his mugs (Natalie had made him buy those too) and cocoa. With his back to her, it felt easier to talk. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to mess up your evening."

"Steve." Natalie sounded both exasperated and sympathetic. "You don't have to apologize."

He felt like he did. There was a reason he'd spent so long by himself in this century, there was a reason he kept to working and staying home. Because he was damaged, and nobody else deserved to have to deal with his shit. Now she would feel obligated to help him, to fix him, when she probably wanted to get away from his mess of a life as fast as she could.

"Sure," he said, slowly, picking his words carefully, "But I know you weren't prepared to deal with that, and I'm… sorry you had to."

"Well, isn't that what friends do?" she asked, her voice gentle, teasing, reassuring.

"No. Well, I mean, you shouldn't have to. And you, um, don't have to. I'll be fine, if you want to-"

"Steve…" Natalie was right at his shoulder now, and he reluctantly turned to look at her. "You won't be able to eat all this soup by yourself. And anyway, I think we'd better talk."

Despite his misgivings, Steve nodded and continued making the hot cocoa.

After he finished making their drinks (and helping Natalie chop up vegetables and dump in spices that he knew nothing about), she herded him over to his couch and they sat down, him sitting up uncomfortably straight and still and she curled up, legs by her chest, bowl of soup propped on her knees, heedless of the fact that she was getting his couch cushions wet.

"Okay," she said, taking a deep breath. "So. First of all, I'm sorry I pushed you to go on that walk, because since you seem to have forgotten, you didn't want to go because of the rain and I made you."

Steve opened his mouth to protest, but she pointed at his bowl of soup and narrowed her eyes. "Shut up and eat, Rogers." He did. It was damn good soup. "Second… Second, I'll admit I had no idea what to do. I'm not so good at comforting people, and I don't know much about… about trauma because I never had a problem with it. But the point of being friends is that you're there for each other. And I've told you about Alexei and losing my parents, and you helped, so I'm just saying… maybe it would be good if you learned to do the same. Talk to me."

Steve sighed and shook his head a little. "You're not my therapist, Natalie," he said. "It isn't your job to fix me, and you don't have to feel like it is."

"I'm not trying to fix you." She sounded offended. "I just want you to talk to me. It isn't that hard and it'll make you feel better. And honestly I'll be way more worried if you don't than if you do."

Steve really didn't want to talk to her, or, more accurately, he shouldn't want to, so he shrugged. "There isn't anything to talk about. I'm fine."

"You froze up out there, Steve, that isn't fine," Natalie snapped, and he set his bowl down on the coffee table with a thunk and turned to glare at her.

"Well maybe I don't want to talk about it, Rushman. Why don't you just-" He stopped, swore under his breath, and exhaled heavily. "Look, let it go, okay? I don't even… I wouldn't even know where to begin to talk to you about all this, and it's too much for me to dump on you."

Natalie crossed her arms. "I'm not as weak as I look, you know," she said shortly.

"No, I never thought-"

"Steve, holding things inside and keeping them to yourself just hurts more. Please, can you at least tell me a little?"

Steve picked up his soup again and swallowed a few large spoonfuls, trying to think. He did want to talk about it. He wanted to admit that he sometimes still felt like he was frozen and dead, wanted to admit that nothing felt right anymore. But he just couldn't.

She was asking him to. She wanted to help.

"I..." He didn't know how to do this. "It's terrible, to remember dying. If we die, normally we'd end up in Heaven or somewhere." He corrected himself with a sigh. "Or at least I believe we would. But I died, Nat, I... I gave up. The plane hit the water so hard that the nose got crushed in and ruptured like... like a tin can. And I got pinned against the pilot's seat and the water just smacked into me and it was like being hit by a massive fist and it was so cold..."

He found himself shaking, so he ate another spoonful of soup.

"I got out of the chair, eventually. I dunno what I wanted to accomplish, I was gonna die anyway, but I couldn't just sit there. And I got as far up the ship as I could because I knew I couldn't survive in that water, but everything kept moving and sinking and I just gave up. Knew I couldn't get away. So I sat down and I watched the water come up to me and it was so cold and I just couldn't let myself drown, but..."

His hands were trembling so much now he thought he was going to drop his bowl. Natasha took it from him.

"I treaded water until I couldn't feel anything and then I just... Do you know what it feels like? To give up? Because I did and I drowned and there's nothing more terrifying than being too cold to even breathe but knowing that if you did you would still die. I died and then I woke up again and after... after all that... people expect me to be fine." Steve shook his head slowly. "And I'm not, I can't be, but I have to be. Because everyone is looking to me. So I can't talk to anyone." He laughed hoarsely. "I can't afford the luxury."

When he glanced over at Natalie, looking for a reaction, she had set aside her soup and propped her chin on her knees, arms wrapped around her legs. She looked sad, but otherwise he wasn't sure what she was thinking.

"I'm sorry, Steve," she said, slowly. She looked nervous and uncomfortable and Steve couldn't help but be angry at himself for that. "I just... I'm sorry." Her hands twisted together, knuckles whitening. "You're safe now, though. You'll be okay now."

Steve normally would have laughed at that. That was the kind of bullshit that he heard from therapists all the time, that he was safe. He wasn't, really. He threw himself in harm's way all the time – that was literally his job – and that was only the half of it. But he knew that Natalie was just trying to help so he nodded and forced a small smile.

She kept going. He almost wanted to stop her. She was struggling, he could tell, but he kept his mouth shut like he'd been told to earlier. "I've never needed you to be strong around me, Steve," she said. "I mean, sometimes I guess. But I'm not… You can be vulnerable with me. I'm not a delicate flower or anything, I can handle whatever you throw at me."

Steve suddenly had a very vivid picture of a tiger lily being crushed by a bowling ball and wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. He settled for an uncertain smile. "Sure."

"You think I can't?"

He winced and tried to come up with a safe response. "I think you might be underestimating how screwed up I am, is all. I can't even handle my shit, I doubt you can."

"Yeah, well maybe both of us together _can_ handle it," she said, crossing her arms and giving him a determined, almost defiant, look. "You can't keep trying to do everything by yourself. It's not good for you, and it's no way for anyone to live."

"I'm doing fine!"

"I had to take you shopping for half of your things!" she said, exasperated, gesturing around at the apartment. Steve gritted his teeth and tried not to get angry. "You can't keep pretending to be fine when you aren't."

He wanted to hate her, for a moment. Wanted to hate her for pointing out how alone he was, how empty his house had been. He was trying. He was trying and he was going to be okay and even if he wasn't, it was up to him who he told about it and he didn't need her.

He _did_ need her, and he hated it. He should never have come to rely on her like this – he should have known she would expect him to talk to her about these things.

"I can do whatever I want, Nat," he snapped, feeling childish but not sure how to articulate what he meant. "You didn't _have_ to do anything for me. You chose to, and believe it or not, I was managing before that. I had a job and a life and I didn't need you to fix it." _Well, that was a great lie. Brilliant. You sure do have a life – a lonely, disgusting, miserable life. Stop being so proud and shut up_.

He didn't shut up. He just kept rambling for a moment about how she had "no right to judge him" and then finally realized he was starting to repeat himself and closed his mouth.

To his dismay, Natalie just looked sympathetic. There was a bit of offense there, too, but mostly pity. And Steve didn't want pity, not from her, not from anyone else. "Steve, I'm not trying to fix your life, I just thought-" She stopped, and looked down. "I just thought I could help you. You seemed really lonely and you're a nice guy and I don't really have any family, so I… I'm sorry."

Irrationally, Steve was angry at her for apologizing, because when she said all that, guilt crashed into his chest like a wrecking ball, demolishing his rib cage and making him ache. Now he'd hurt Natalie when all she wanted to do was be his friend. He stuffed his hands into his hoodie pocket and fought back a lump in his throat. "No, I'm sorry," letting out a long, tired sigh "about getting mad. I just… You have enough problems of your own without trying to deal with mine. You weren't supposed to have to."

She laughed a little, shaking her head. "There are a lot of things you didn't plan for, Steve. This is the Twenty-First Century. Nowadays people talk to each other when they're upset, even if it feels scary."

Steve wasn't sure that was quite true, but he had realized, through watching the movies and TV shows that he was told to, that the current generation generally admired people who could talk about their feelings even when it was hard. Steve couldn't identify with that kind of thinking, not really. He was trying, but he'd been raised to be strong and hold everything close to his chest because that was what people did. He only ever saw his ma cry three times, once when she told him how his father died, once in the worst year of the Depression when Steve got deadly sick, and once when she was dying. That was how things were. Soldiers weren't supposed to be affected by the war, either, so when SHIELD had shoved Steve into a psych eval and some white-shirt square-glasses doctor told him it was okay to be messed up, he'd almost laughed in their face.

And Natalie wanted him to talk to her about his shit because "this was the Twenty-First Century." He sighed, to keep from getting irritated again, and said, "Yeah, I know."

She met his eyes, thoughtfully, searching. He stared right back, waiting for her to do something. Renew her pleas for him to talk, walk out the door and never come back, smack him, anything. What she actually did was much less dramatic and more nerve-wracking, though.

"I don't know what else to say to you, Steve," she sighed, getting up and taking his cold bowl of soup off the coffee table. "I'm sorry. Are you warm yet?"

"Yeah." He wasn't. There was still ice somewhere in his core and he was shivering. He couldn't get sick though, thanks to the serum, so he refused to make an issue of it.

"Well, I have to get to work. I have a later shift tonight. See you around?"

He tried to stand quickly and found that his legs were asleep. His mouth tripped over phrases like "I'm sorry" and "Please tell me you're coming back" so that all that came out was, "Yeah, I'll see you."

She pulled on her wet tennis shoes and jacket. Smiled at him. Opened his door and walked out into the hallway and then it closed behind her and

Steve had blown it.

Again.

He swore and ran both hands through his hair, staring at the door. He debated running after her, considered trying to make some kind of apology, but he couldn't think of anything to say that he hadn't said already or wouldn't screw up.

So instead of going after her, he turned around and, with a brief effort, collected himself. He should probably clean up the kitchen.

He'd probably ruined everything. He wasn't going to see her again. He didn't know if he could live with that, on top of everything else. Just one more friend he'd failed.

Was that pathetic? Definitely.

Steve was past caring.

* * *

 **A/N: Alright, so, as anyone of you know who've read my Romanogers fanfic (or any of my fanfic really), I'm not writing Natasha the way I normally do. The reason should be obvious since I had to spoil the whole story in the description, but yeah. -_- I'm kinda grumpy because I wanted to try to make it as surprising as possible when Steve found out that Nat isn't really Natalie Rushman, etc. However, I can't do that without downright lying in the description, so...**

 **This fic is, rather ridiculously, based off of a totally goofy** **conversation I had with my boyfriend where I claimed that I've been a spy this whole time trying to find out stuff about his house and whatever, Idek. XD Long story short, I decided to write a Romanogers fake relationship fic. It's a great idea imo so I'm not complaining about the unusual source of inspiration.**

 **Angst angst angst, I haven't written Steve being so uncomfortable in the modern world before and I honesty kind of maybe liked doing it too much. Idk.**

 **Anyway, please review and the next chapter should be coming soon-ish. :) There will probably only be like 3-4 chapters, but that kinda depends.**


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Once again, Steve was wrong. (When it came to Natalie, he was beginning to sense a trend.) The very next day she texted him, and without even mentioning their previous conversation, asked if he wanted to go to the Smithsonian with her. Steve didn't really want to because of the new exhibit they had about him, but he didn't want her to think he was still angry either, so he just agreed. They spent an hour at the museum, with Natalie teasing him relentlessly most of the time. The only time she didn't was when they were standing in front of the memorial to Bucky. Then she just looked at Steve like she wanted to say something and then looked down.

He considered telling her what he was thinking – but then he didn't.

It wasn't so much that he had changed his mind, it was more that, once his anger and embarrassment had cooled somewhat, he realized that he did feel a little better for having told her. Not drastically so, but he no longer felt so alone. He felt as if a burden had been, if not taken off his shoulders, significantly lightened.

Still, telling Natalie about everything else he thought and felt… he couldn't do that. So even as time went by, he kept his admissions to a minimum. He told her when his PTSD made his grip on hope just a little too precarious. He called her to hang out when he needed distracting from his own brain. He told her about his missions (concealing the classified information, of course) and injuries, and in turn she tried to help him take better care of himself. It turned out she was a wizard with first aid supplies, so on the rare occasion when he needed stitches and, inevitably, messed them up, she fixed them for him.

He got comfortable texting her and peppering the messages with too many emojis, just to pester her. She retaliated with cryptic messages in Russian characters. He never bothered translating them.

Steve should have seen it coming, he really should have, but he tended to forget how closely SHIELD was watching him, even with an agent playacting as his neighbor. So when, after a mission debriefing, Fury didn't dismiss him but instead steepled his fingers and leaned forward at his desk, Steve had no idea what to expect.

"Sit down, Cap."

Steve did. When he'd first met Fury, he'd thought the man seemed like a military commander. Now, Steve no longer felt the same. The Director had the composure and authority of a general, but there was an underlying sharpness and slyness that made Steve uncomfortable. He knew Fury trusted no one, and because of that, he didn't trust Fury.

"What is it, sir?" he asked, pressing his hands together so he didn't start fidgeting.

"That woman you've been hanging out with," Fury said, as if it couldn't be anything else. Steve's stomach dropped and he fought down irrational panic. They couldn't take her away from him, could they? "We've vetted her and we have a few concerns." He began rattling off a list before Steve could react. "Her mom has dropped off the map, no one knows who her dad was. We can't reach her college professors because two are dead, one is on vacation, and the rest simply refuse to talk about her. Her former husband is dead too, and everyone connected with him is strangely uncooperative, even when given incentive to talk." Fury leaned back and spread his hands. "You sure you should trust her, Rogers?"

Steve felt a hot anger searing up his spine and tingling in his ears, a feeling he'd almost forgotten over the past year. He'd be damned if he let this stupid agency tell him who he could and couldn't trust when he couldn't even trust _them_. He crossed his arms and retorted, "You sure you should pry into my private life, Fury? I trust her more than I trust you, I can tell you that much, and you'd need a hell of a lot more evidence against her to change that."

Fury's eyebrows drew in on his forehead, but other than that, he didn't look too concerned. "You oughta listen to me. I've been in this business for over thirty years, I know when something isn't right, and her? There's something going on there and I don't think you need to get involved with that."

"Is that an order, sir?" Steve asked, biting off the ends of the words, feeling his mouth trying to curve into a bitter smirk.

Fury looked at him for a long, quiet moment. Then he shook his head. "No. If I thought you'd listen, maybe it would be. For now I think we're just going to put a more specialized agent in your apartment building." The Director pulled out a cell phone that was even thinner and sleeker than Steve's confusing new smartphone and tapped the screen a few times. Steve suddenly didn't have anything to do with his anger but seethe silently. Sitting still was nigh on impossible.

After another moment of silence, the door to Fury's office hissed open, and the Director said, "Meet your new neighbor."

Steve turned around fully prepared to dislike whoever stepped through the door, so he was almost angry when Clint Barton strode through the door. He couldn't hate Barton, Barton was a decent guy and an Avenger. He'd hoped it could be someone like Grant Ward, someone gruff and harsh and a little too quick on the trigger. Then he'd be able to hate them and feel fine about not reporting in when he was supposed to.

Barton sauntered over and shot Steve a smile, and it was almost scary how the smile changed him: he went from looking like a gang member to a suburban dad in seconds. Then the smile was gone and he sat down on the chair next to Steve's. "Captain."

"Agent Barton."

"I want you to take over Agent 13's post," Fury said to Barton, almost ignoring Steve now. "The Captain has a friend I don't trust. Agent 13 is competent, but she's only there to keep an eye on him. She's reported the potential threat, now I need you to go in and monitor it."

"Natalie's not an _it_ ," Steve snapped fiercely. "She's not a threat, she's a person, and I don't need a bodyguard." He glanced at Barton. "No offense."

"None taken." The agent smiled a little and stretched. "I'm on it, Nick. Thanks."

"Good. You're both dismissed."

Steve stood first, trying to get out of the room as fast as he could without running. He didn't want to talk to Barton. He didn't even want to think about all this. He wanted to go home and forget all about this stupid job of his and its implications. Now he couldn't even choose his friends? Apparently not, not without SHIELD butting in and reminding him that Captain America had to be kept safe, Captain America had to pick suitable people to spend time with, Captain America needed a goddamn _bodyguard_.

He made it out the door before Barton, but the archer grabbed his shoulder before he could take off. Only good manners kept Steve from ripping his arm free and running as fast as he could as far as he could. "What?" he growled.

"Hey, man, chill. Let me talk to you for a minute, okay?"

Steve clenched his fists but turned halfway to look at Barton. "I'm listening."

"I'm not gonna pretend this isn't invasive, Rogers. It is, big time. Fury's concerns are legitimate, but I'm inclined to think your friend's just trying to start over after that husband of hers. So you don't have to worry about me harping on you about her being dangerous. This is my first assignment since that shitstorm earlier this year, and I don't wanna ruin this, so try not to make things too hard for me and I won't pry into your business too much. That's all I can do for you, okay? We clear?"

Steve slumped a little and nodded. "Yeah, I get it."

Barton clapped his shoulder reassuringly. "This could be good, Rogers. Just pretend I'm your new neighbor, we'll bond over sports, and I'll make sure to put an arrow through anyone trying to hurt you. No big deal."

Sighing, Steve nodded and finally pulled away. He couldn't stay angry at Barton when the guy decided to act like this, but he wasn't going to be pals with him either. "See you later, neighbor." He left, trying to keep from snapping at everyone who spoke to him.

He didn't know what to tell Natalie. Should he just be honest and admit that SHIELD had gone through her history and acquaintances? Or did he try to pretend that everything was fine?

There wasn't really a choice. However much he wanted her in his life, however much he not only valued but _needed_ her friendship, he couldn't let SHIELD spy on her without her knowledge, without giving her a chance to get out. She'd never agreed to a violation of her privacy, so it wasn't fair of him to pretend that SHIELD hadn't gone digging.

He thought over the problem as he drove home, trying to think how to tell her, how to explain _this_. A part of him was trying to find a way to spin it so it wouldn't sound as bad as it was – a part of him wanted to try to ensure that she wouldn't be scared off, or that if she was, she would come back.

He didn't pay those thoughts any mind, except to be disgusted by them. He hoped he'd never be so desperate for friendship that he'd manipulate people and twist the truth to hang on to it. That wasn't who he was, but sometimes he felt himself slipping – less often these days, but he still did. It was usually worse after he visited Peggy.

Peggy.

The first time he'd gone to see her, he'd been quietly terrified. They said she had dementia and explained what that might mean, even though he could already guess. She was old and tired and stretched thin, they said. She'd gotten married and had a few children. At first he'd been afraid that if she saw him, it would shock her too much. Maybe it would be dangerous for her health. But when he first went to see her, she thought he was a dream. Nothing he could say convinced her he wasn't until he sat down and took her hand. Then the tears started, and the shocked, surprisingly lucid questions, and he did his best to soothe her and hold back his own tears. After that visit though, sometimes she remembered him, sometimes it was like the first time she was seeing him all over again, sometimes she didn't even know who he was. Those were the worst days, but at least he had her still. At least he had someone.

But then as time went on and Peggy got worse, not better, Steve found himself visiting less often, because every day that she forgot who he was, forgot who she had been, he felt a part of himself breaking and disappearing. He wasn't sure how to stop it, but he couldn't stand to lose that last connection to his past. So he asked the nurses to message him on her more lucid days so he could come when she would remember – he came sometimes on her worse days, too, but on those days he left feeling like he'd been drowning the whole time. That made him feel guilty, but he couldn't stand to push himself to do better.

He didn't know if he would like who he was in this new century. He didn't know if he could be himself anymore when all anybody wanted was Captain America.

Except Natalie.

He pulled into the parking lot of his apartment complex and parked his motorcycle, pocketing the keys and letting out a sigh. Now that he was home, he didn't really have an excuse not to tell Natalie what had happened.

Only once he got in his apartment he saw a thousand things that ought to be cleaned or fixed or reorganized. He knew full well by now that cleaning compulsively was a nervous habit that he used to effectively put off things he didn't want to do, but it didn't matter that he knew what he was doing – he did it anyway. He vacuumed the floor and threw out some spoiled leftovers and reorganized his bedroom closet and the cabinets under his bathroom sink and then he washed the covers of the couch cushions and only then did he force himself to stop and text Natalie.

 **Steve: Hey**

 _Nat: Hey!_

 **What's up?**

 _The prices at the diner._

 **Well that's awful. You busy?**

 _Liho says yes. I'm not though, she's just mad I'm ignoring her. Whatcha need?_

 **Idk how to say this really.**

 _Well that sounds ominous. Just say it and I'll yell at you about phrasing later._

 **Not helping.**

He hesitated, closed his eyes, let out a groaning sigh, and typed out the issue.

 **SHIELD's been checking up on you. They dug up a lot of stuff about you and your past.**

A long pause. Five minutes. Steve's heart did a vicious tap routine against the inside of his chest.

 _How rude of them. Did they discover my secret alien origins?_

Steve laughed.

 **Nope, those are safe. I'm sorry though, Nat, they went and questioned people about your husband and your professors and everything. They said they didn't think I should trust you.**

 _I see._

Another, longer, pause. Steve debated sending another text – did she expect him to have more to say? He considered telling her about Barton, but the whole point of Barton being there was that no one would know he was. So he left that part out.

 _Why didn't they think I was trustworthy?_

 **They didn't really have any good reasons. They just didn't like how none of your husband's acquaintances would talk to them. Or how a lot of the people you knew are unavailable to talk to, I guess.**

 _Those are dumb reasons. Anyway, why's it their business?_

Steve rubbed his face and sighed. It wasn't SHIELD's business, really, but at the same time he understood. He was an employee of the world's biggest, most technologically advanced spy organization, and unfortunately he was also Captain America. He was in a prime position for someone to get a foothold in the organization and, potentially, get rid of _him_.

Still, that didn't give them a right to his life or the lives of his friends.

 **Because I work for them and I know a lot of big top-secret things, Rushman.**

 _Touché._

 _That is pretty rude of them. But as long as you're properly annoyed at them, it's not a big deal. I really shouldn't have expected anything less._

 **So you aren't mad?**

 _Oh, I'm furious. Just not at you. Or even at SHIELD. I'm mad at Liho because she just stole a piece of my BACON._

Steve laughed, a barking sound that let out all his pent-up worry about the situation in one breath. From there, he and Nat's conversation dissolved into a debate over whether or not Liho deserved to keep the bacon for being devious enough to steal it or whether she deserved to be utterly shunned for ten minutes with no petting.

He had rarely been so relieved to have a meaningless conversation.

…

Barton moved into the apartments a few weeks later, and the first time Steve ran into him in the hallway, Barton acted properly shocked and amazed to have _Captain America_ as a neighbor, dropped a few suitcases, laughed awkwardly, and said his name was Joe. He was wearing a Yankees jersey, so Steve did his patriotic duty and engaged in some good old-fashioned trash talk about baseball. Barton was playing his part so well that Steve wasn't sure if he was actually a Yankees fan or had just done his research really thoroughly.

Afterwards, though, as Steve helped him carry his things into his apartment (because he might as well), Barton took a break to offer him a beer and comment, "You really hate the whole Captain America thing, don't you?"

"I… What?" Steve blinked, surprised, taking the proffered bottle of beer from the archer.

Barton laughed sympathetically and pried open his own beer. "It's really obvious, man. At least to me. Everyone at SHIELD says when people ask you for autographs and things you're really tense and quiet, which they just figure is because fangirls are scary, but when I came up and did the whole "Captain America fanboy" thing, you got the most uncomfortable look on your face. What is it, the attention or the name, that gets you?"

Steve raised an eyebrow and sipped his beer. "Just because you're my neighbor now doesn't make it your business, Barton." The archer nodded, but he was grinning, so Steve sighed and shrugged. "Both, I guess. I don't like how everyone seems to think they have a right to my life because I'm a 'superhero'. And…" He paused, glanced at Barton, and sighed. "I don't like the title either, no. I used to be proud of it, but now it's like I have to represent a country I don't understand anymore, and people like Tony Stark judge me without even knowing me. It's exhausting."

Barton nodded, and it actually looked like he understood. "Sometimes I really am glad I'm the least interesting Avenger," he joked. "Nobody cares what Clint Barton is up to or what he does in his spare time, but everyone wants to see what you and Tony are doing. At least Tony thrives on the attention – he's a little crazy, I think."

"He really is," Steve said, shaking his head, chuckling half-heartedly. "Even more so than his dad."

"Well yeah. If your dad had been partially responsible for giving Captain America his powers, you'd be pretty keen on getting out from under his shadow too. Tony may not have created any new superheroes, but he's turned himself into one, so I think he's doing alright." Barton winked. "Sorry. I guess you're kinda stuck with all this, aren't you?"

Steve shrugged. He was, in more ways than one, but he wasn't going to make an issue of it now. "It's good." They finished their beers and went back to moving Barton's things into the apartment, leaving Steve with a few new things to think about and maybe even someone new to talk to.

He didn't tell Natalie about any of it. He only barely mentioned his new neighbor. He still didn't feel that it was right to blow Barton's cover just because he knew that Natalie was trustworthy. That wouldn't be fair to Barton, nor would it be prudent anyway. Natalie didn't need to know any more about his dealings with SHIELD than necessary – he was aware that people might try to leverage her against him.

That was something he refused to think about. How many other people, he often wondered wryly, had to worry about their friends being spied on, kidnapped, or scared off by their mental issues? Probably almost no one. But he had to actively avoid imagining what would happen if Natalie, fierce but small and delicate, was interrogated or held hostage by people who wanted things, from him or SHIELD or the government. It made him angry that SHIELD had given him another guard but hadn't tried to give Nat extra protection. Maybe he should talk to them about that.

But he didn't. He didn't think he was being so obvious with his friendship with Natalie that it was common knowledge, and he knew that she was already a little paranoid due to her history. If anything really was wrong, she would tell him (he'd made her promise to).

He ended up regretting that view of things.

…

"Alright, Cap, whatever," Clint chuckled, straightening his shirt sleeves. "It's not like I wanted to wear this, but I have a reputation to build."

"What, as my dad?" Steve retorted, laughing.

"No, but you're close. Come on, who questions a badly-dressed suburban dad with a man-crush on Captain America? This is a good disguise."

The archer was wearing a stained shirt that read "Best Dad Ever!" in scrawling letters, with stick figure people around them. Steve wasn't sure if those stains were real if they were part of the disguise, but Clint was pulling off the "dad" look really well. To the point of hilarity. The two of them had taken to hanging out regularly, ostensibly so that Steve could check in with Clint and give him a report, but by now they really only did the check-in when they got back to the apartment building, because it turned out that they had more interests in common than anyone could have expected.

"It's a good disguise, but terrible fashion," Steve teased. "Nat would march you off to the nearest department store if she saw you."

Clint's smile changed mid-laugh, and he pointed at Steve as if coming to a realization. "Alright, that's it. I wasn't convinced but this… Twenty-seven separate times in three hours, Steve. Twenty-seven. Different topics. I tried really hard to stick to unrelated things but every single time…"

"What?" Steve blinked, confused.

"You have brought up Natalie Rushman in relation to something in conversation twenty-seven times. I mean, we were talking about the Dodgers and you brought her up and she isn't even a baseball fan!"

"Yeah…?" Steve got a sinking feeling. This felt way too much like the times Bucky used to try to set him up with a girl that would probably end up ignoring him for an hour. "She's my friend. Kind of my only one."

"Fair point, Cap. Fair point. But all I'm saying is that you get a really stupid smile when you talk about her. And you got pretty defensive of her to Fury for someone who's just a _friend_."

Steve bristled. "What, people normally don't defend their friends from having their privacy violated?"

He actually wasn't sure how to feel about Clint's assumption. Part of him was angry that his intentions had been so misrepresented, embarrassed about the shade of red he knew his whole face would be turning, and regretting the number of times he'd let on that Clint's comments made him think about Natalie. The rest of him was extremely confused. He still wasn't over Peggy, he was pretty sure about that – that wound still throbbed when he prodded it. He didn't think he was good for Natalie, in any way, an assessment she would likely disagree with if she knew, but still. She was divorced, and worse still, her ex-husband had abused her and practically made her a prisoner, so even if… even if… Steve stopped himself there and crossed his arms.

"There's nothing there, Clint. I just don't have anyone else to-"

His phone rang, and with an annoyed huff and a glare at Clint to keep him from saying anything, he answered it. It was Natalie. He didn't let the archer see the screen – no need to give him any more excuses to tease.

"Hello?"

"Steve, I could use a little help." Natalie's voice was a hiss of breath, harsh and insistent.

"What? Why? What's wrong?" Steve shot Clint a worried look and mouthed "Natalie." Clint caught on and nodded, smile melting into an almost-frightening look of concentration.

"There are kind of… some guys. In my house."

"Okay, I'll be right there. Where are you, how can you be calling?"

"I locked myself in my room and then pushed the dresser in front of the door. Now I'm in the bathroom and I locked myself in here too."

"Nice. Okay. I'll be there, okay? Just hang on. Call 911."

"Yeah, don't have a lot of other options here, Rogers," she snapped. "Hurry up."

Steve tried to gather a response, then shook his head, hung up, and took off running back towards his car.

"What's up?" Clint asked, breaking into a jog himself. "What's happening?"

"There are men in Natalie's apartment. She barricaded herself in her bathroom. We need to go help."

"You sure this isn't a trap?"

Steve scowled and shrugged. "If it is, we might as well spring it and get it over with. But it's not."

Clint nodded. "Alright, good enough for me."

Steve prayed the whole way to Natalie's apartment complex, hands tight on the steering wheel of his car, berating himself for not insisting on some kind of guard or security system or _something_. Could they even get there in time? What if it was a trap, whether set up by Natalie _(not possible)_ or by the attackers?

"Hey, Cap, it'll be fine," Clint said. When Steve glanced briefly at him, he was startled to see Clint examining a pair of guns. Where had he been hiding those? "If she did any good barricading herself, we'll have at least a few extra minutes. Worst case scenario, we have to chase them down and get her back. No big deal either way."

Steve nodded and pressed down harder on the gas pedal.

When they arrived, he pulled the car to an almost painfully abrupt stop on the street outside the apartment building, and he and Clint jumped out, Clint having made his guns disappear back to wherever he'd been keeping them before. Steve decided it might be prudent for him to start carrying a gun too.

He rushed to the doors and shoved them open, scowling. He wasn't going to let anything happen to Natalie, not now, not ever.

He took the stairs up to Natalie's floor three at a time, Clint cursing but gamely following just a few steps behind. They didn't meet anyone going down, and Steve hoped that meant the men hadn't left yet.

He arrived at Natalie's door, hesitated, then banged on it. It drifted open on its own - apparently the lock had been broken, so he pushed past it. He didn't pause to listen for a reaction to his entrance, he just rushed to her room where, ominously, the door was already open, letting out the sound of rushed, whispered conversation. He let out an angry growl and grabbed hold of the first person he saw, a big, brutish man with hard eyes and a turned-down mouth. Steve dragged him backwards by the shoulders, and the man wrenched free and spun around to fight.

Clint laid into another man, showing a surprising amount of prowess with his hand to hand fighting. Steve had somehow been of the impression that Clint's only strength lay in firing off arrows – not that that would have been a bad thing.

He took brief note of a third thug lying on the floor in the bathroom, and in front of him, Natalie, not moving. Furious and terrified, he redoubled his attack on the man he was fighting and managed to stun him by slamming his head into the bathroom doorframe. A follow-up elbow strike to the back of the head kept his opponent down for a while.

He was about to help Clint when the archer managed to pull out a gun and press it to his man's head. "Alright, genius, give it a rest," Clint snapped. "Sit."

The man sat, and Clint kept the gun to his head the whole time. Steve saw it first, a flick of the attacker's wrist, a subtle move by his waist. "Knife!" he yelled.

Clint fired just as the weapon slid into their prisoner's hand, and there was a howl of fury as a bullet slammed into the man's forearm. The knife clattered right back out of his grasp, and Steve snatched it off the floor as fast as he could, tossing it across the room.

"Check on your girl," Clint ordered, scowling. "I'll try to get something out of this bastard."

Steve stepped over the fallen thug and crouched by Natalie's prone form, clumsily checking her pulse with his two fingers on her neck. It was there, steady and fast. He carefully rolled her over onto her side; she was unconscious. From her bruised knuckles and the downed man lying behind her in the bathroom, he figured she'd fought back – and fought well.

"Nat," he whispered, patting her cheek. She didn't stir. There was a bruising, slightly cut area above her eye where he decided she must have hit her head on the counter, and there were several red marks on her face that he was pretty sure were also going to bruise – they already looked a little purple. A spreading line of blood on her shirt near her hip showed where she must have been swiped by one of the thugs' knives. He didn't think it was severe, but he quickly pushed up the fabric to check – it was a bad cut, but didn't seem to have hit anything important.

All his anger settled to a heavy burn in his chest, leaving him shaking and frightened for her. She was probably fine, but she might not have been. She could have been kidnapped or killed or badly injured or worse.

"Cap, com'ere," Clint called.

Steve hesitated, then stood and strode over. "What?"

Clint nodded to his prisoner. "This dumbass isn't talking."

The thug smiled broadly and chuckled a little. But he didn't say anything. Steve scowled and crossed his arms, feeling the anger rising hot like lava up his throat. "What do we do about that?"

"I wanna take him to SHIELD. Maybe they can get something out of him – the police'll just bungle it. You wanna help me tie these bozos up and I'll take them over the Triskelion in my car?"

"Sure. I can stay with Nat."

Clint raised an eyebrow at him, smiling a little, and Steve huffed an irritated breath but refused to respond otherwise. "Okay, good. The police should be here any time, unless she got interrupted calling."

Steve nodded. "I'll make sure they're coming."

"Maybe see if they can get her to the hospital, too," Clint said, frowning. "Just to be sure she isn't messed up too bad. I don't like that head injury."

"Right." Steve helped the archer find some materials to use to tie up the attackers' ankles, and Clint said he had some SHIELD-issue handcuffs in his car.

"You know, for emergencies." After that, Steve helped cart the three men downstairs, earning some horrified looks from some of the other residents. Clint flashed his SHIELD badge a number of times, always saying something about there having been a break-in and sorry for the intrusion. After he drove off, the thugs safely tied and handcuffed in his backseat and, amusingly, trunk, Steve hurried back up to Natalie's apartment and carried her out of the bathroom to her bed. He found her cellphone on the bathroom floor, screen cracked. When he turned it on, the dial pad blinked with the numbers "91444." Apparently she had been interrupted in the midst of trying to call. He redialed the actual emergency number, running on autopilot and detailing the situation to the operator, who promised to send people right away. Then he hung up and went over to the desk in Nat's room, pulling out the chair and sinking onto it.

She was still out, which wasn't exactly unusual, but which left him lots of room to think. Maybe too much.

He folded his hands tight together in his lap to keep from fidgeting. He'd hurt Natalie again – not directly, this time, but he'd been the cause. And he couldn't stand it. What if she really wasn't okay? Then what? He couldn't keep spending time with her, he couldn't. Not after this.

But they'd go after her anyway. He felt trapped, felt scared, angry, confused, stupid. How could he keep her safe? Maybe now SHIELD would let him have a guard posted in her apartment, but that might not be enough.

Worse, in a way, Clint's assumption that Steve had some kind of feelings for Natalie had gotten harder to ignore. Steve didn't know whether the protective anger in his chest could really be attributed to friendship or whether his terror that Nat might be more badly hurt than he supposed was normal. Maybe both feelings were an indication of something else.

They weren't. He was just tired of having to worry about people taking advantage of him or getting attacked in his own apartment or keeping SHIELD's secrets. At least when he'd been poor and sick in Brooklyn he'd felt able to choose his own course, go where he wanted. He'd been limited by his physical condition and lack of funds, sure, but now that he had a steady income and a near-flawless body he was trapped being what everyone expected him to be.

"Steve?"

He stood so quickly it made him dizzy, rushing over to the side of the bed. Natalie had sat up on her elbows, wincing, and he was quick to press on her shoulder, urging her to lay back down. "Not so fast, Rushman. You have a lump on your head and a cut on your side and I don't know what all else."

She scowled but laid back, her hand going to her head to tentatively feel the injury. "Ow." She closed her eyes for a minute, then opened them again and stubbornly pushed herself back onto her elbows, eyes going straight to the wound on her hip. Instead of freaking out or making a face, she just sighed and lay back down. "So… I take it they're gone?"

"Yeah. I called 911 anyway, to get you to the hospital, and SHIELD took your attackers into custody."

Natalie nodded. Outside, Steve heard wailing sirens. "I'm sorry," she said wryly. "I know you were with your friend, but-"

Steve almost laughed except he knew all too well how she felt. "No, no, don't apologize. Really. What were you supposed to do, let them take you? That would be stupid. It's not like I can't hang out with Joe another time."

Natalie laughed, winced, and scowled. "That sucked."

"Tell me about it," Steve said bitterly.

"You're okay, right?"

Disbelieving, he snorted. "Yeah, Rushman. Fine."

She grinned at him and pushed a hand through her hair. She seemed to be avoiding looking at her knife wound. Which made sense. "You saved my life, Rogers."

He chuckled. "It wasn't a big deal."

"Not a big deal? I was going to be kidnapped, Steve, they were going to-" Finally the shock of what had happened kicked in and she started crying, softly at first then louder. Steve heard a knock on the front door but let the emergency responders let themselves in as he got up, sat down on the edge of Nat's bed, and pulled her into his arms as she cried.

"I'm sorry, Natalie," he said quietly. "I should've known this would happen."

Before she could say anything, an officer in a blue uniform came into the room, taking stock of the situation. "Hello, Captain Rogers. Thanks for giving us a call."

"Hi." Steve nodded awkwardly. "Miss Rushman is injured, is there…?"

"Yes, you told us." The woman gestured behind her to the doorway. "There are EMTs waiting in the living room to take her. Where are the perpetrators?"

"SHIELD took them," Steve said casually. He'd never done this before, but they'd told him what to do. Flash his SHIELD ID, lay it on thick with the "matter of national security" talk, and if necessary pull the Captain America card. He let go of Nat and stood up. "They're in government custody. I can show you my credentials, if you need-?"

"Please."

Steve pulled his ID out of his back pocket and flipped it open for the officer.

"Captain, it's upside down." She was trying really hard not to smile, which he appreciated. Behind him, Natalie laughed shortly.

"Right. Sorry." He turned the ID over, face burning.

"Thank you. This is highly irregular, but it seems that's what we have to expect nowadays."

The paramedics came in, talked to Natalie who insisted on being sassy the whole time, and walked her out because she refused to wait for them to bring up a stretcher. Steve chuckled, nodded along to instructions about how to lock up the house, and walked out behind her in case she fell.

The end result of the whole affair was that Steve valued Clint's friendship more than ever, Natalie only ended up with stitches and a mild concussion, and Steve realized, somewhat to his dismay, that Natalie Rushman was fast becoming his whole world.

* * *

 **A/N: I had to do it. The damsel in distress thing. Don't worry, I'm not by any means suggesting that Nat could be taken down by just three thugs. All will be explained in due time. But for now I needed to establish that Steve definitely has a crush on her.**

 **This story is fast-paced on purpose - originally it was only going to be a one-shot. Mostly I'm jumping between major events of the story with exposition in between. Sorry I've been so much slower than I expected. ;)**

 **Please review. :)**


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

After "the incident," Steve pulled back from spending as much time with Natalie. He hung out with Clint more and learned how to cook most his own meals and went on missions and generally lived as he was expected to live. SHIELD put a few agents in the diner and Natalie's apartment building, and although Nick Fury didn't actually apologize, he did tell Steve he was glad she was alright. There was apparently no information to be gotten from the prisoners: they said nothing, which seemed to be because they knew nothing.

Natalie seemed increasingly unwilling to buy his excuses for not hanging out, and Steve was afraid he was going to hurt her feelings. Maybe he already had. It was just that he couldn't keep pursuing a relationship that so endangered her.

In actuality, Steve was scared to death of really growing to love again. He couldn't stand the idea of risking his heart again, of actually daring to invest in something he could lose. He didn't want to let someone into his life only to scare them off with the deepest, darkest parts of himself. He didn't want to feel secure and then see her run away when she realized how deep the water over her head was.

But of course, Steve wasn't aware of most of these truths and so successfully managed to lie to himself on a regular basis. As usual, this self-deception just made him miserable, and he found that if anything, his thoughts were drawn more and more back to Natalie, wondering how she was, if she was safe, what she was doing, how soon he could see her again without putting her in danger.

Because he did keep seeing her. Not often, and certainly not enough, but he saw her at the diner, met up with her at the movies, walked with her in the park. He told her he had a lot of extended missions. It was easy to lie about that because he couldn't talk about his missions anyway.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder. It's an old adage, and perhaps it's fair to say that no one knew its accuracy as well as Steve. This new foray into such territory proved to be no different. He wanted to tell Clint sometimes, but he was pretty sure Clint would just laugh at him. The archer was a good guy and a better friend, that was true, but Steve wasn't going to open that can of worms with him.

Clint had a "family" now. They'd moved in a while after Clint did, and he explained to Steve that his story was that he had had to move east before they could because he was trying to get back on his feet after losing his job and he had to make enough money to get them all there. Joe's wife was named Hannah, his children Lily and Charles. Steve didn't know their real names, and he was a little worried about the kids. Weren't they a little young for something like this? But he didn't ask about it – sometimes he thought the less he knew about SHIELD the better.

Seeing Clint with his family, getting to know Hannah and the kids, made Steve acutely aware of something that he'd been trying to avoid – this was what he wanted. It always had been. He hadn't told anyone, except his mom, but he'd never wanted to end up like this. He had wanted the American dream as he used to know it, a chance to make something of himself, a stable home for a wife and some kids. If he was lucky he'd get to move them out of the city and into the country, because he loved Brooklyn but he knew it wasn't healthy. But the war had turned that on its head, and his "death" had ground it to dust. It wasn't that he hated fighting – he was good at it, and it was how he protected what he cared about. What he hated was that it was his future now. Somewhere through it all he'd become very little more than a front-line soldier, a high-caliber weapon. Steve Rogers didn't take priority anymore, his duty did.

There's nothing to make a man hate power like the responsibility that comes with it.

Clint's fiction was the life Steve had always wanted. And it hurt him that he could be so captivated by a lie.

Dream or no dream, he wasn't going to risk anything with Natalie, not in that quarter and not in general. He wondered if avoiding her was too cautious and too rude, but for a long time he went with that plan anyway.

He half expected Natalie to show up some day and give him a lecture – that seemed in character for her. But she never did. She kept trying to make plans, and when they spent time together she seemed to be analyzing him for some kind of explanation, but she never actually asked about his avoidance of her. He knew she noticed – she was smart, and the way she responded when he said he was too busy to hang out was irritated and knowing.

In the end he gave up on the self-imposed restriction himself. He found it was too hard to do without Natalie's company and too hard to lose the reassurance of having someone to talk to. He wasn't sure he loved her or anything near that, but he definitely liked her, admired her, respected her, needed her. He didn't want to analyze those feelings too much, and he didn't want to risk anything, so he left it there.

He stopped making excuses to her. There was no point.

…

"Can't I introduce you two?" Steve asked Clint one day. He eyed the distance between the ball and the flag fluttering a short distance away, golf club resting lightly on the turf of the fairway. Golf could occasionally go quite well for him – if he managed to properly channel it, his strength got the ball pretty far. If not, he never saw that ball again. "I wouldn't tell her you were an agent."

Clint sighed, also analyzing the hit Steve had to make. "I don't know, man. I'd like to – I want to decide for myself what kind of woman she is. That being said, the goal here is for me to stay low-profile, and meeting Captain America's almost-girlfriend might make me a bit more of a target than I hoped for."

"She isn't-" Steve trailed off, grumbling. "Why." He practiced his swing. "I guess I get that. But it's not like I spend lots more time with her than with you – your apartment is safe, I'm sure. We could just stay in and do a movie or something." He made a decision and knocked the ball a few dozen yards to land on the green and roll a foot or so.

Clint nodded slowly. "I know. I just have to think about it a little – I can't endanger Lily and Charles more than I already have." His eyes were remorseful at that.

Steve latched onto the opportunity to ask, "Why did SHIELD give you a family? Wouldn't it have been safer to say you were single, or just had no kids?"

Clint's expression actually faltered for a moment, his jaw softening, his eyes blinking shut like he was flinching. Then he coughed and started walking to where his last hit had landed his ball. "It's… They… Nothing is less threatening than a suburban dad with two kids. There's an extraction plan for them. Hannah knows what to do if anything goes wrong."

Steve frowned. Of course Hannah would know what to do, she was an agent like Clint. The archer's head was down, shoulders back and confident but muscles tense. Steve walked a little faster to keep up. He didn't trust SHIELD, but thinking about it, he didn't think SHIELD would actually send two kids into danger to gain such a slight advantage. Clint's shirt, the stained "Best Dad Ever" shirt… Steve had assumed, naturally, that the little handprints and the faded ketchup stains were just to add to the look. That Clint's knowledge of baseball and delicious mac'n'cheese was just another part of his disguise. It had regularly seemed strange to him, too, how well those two kids could act… it seemed second nature to them to treat Hannah and Clint like their parents.

Steve cleared his throat, trying to figure out what to say. "I still don't think it's a good idea. This is a long mission, and they're more of a liability than an advantage."

"I know!" Clint snarled, then he stopped and closed his eyes. "I know, Steve."

"They aren't agents, are they," Steve stated. "None of them."

His friend sighed and shook his head, trying for a laugh. "You're smarter than anyone else gives you credit for, Rogers. No, no they aren't. I didn't really want them along. I mean… I did. But not Lila and Cooper." He chuckled a little. "I've been married to Laura for almost fourteen years. And after the whole Loki thing, I went back to the farm on paid leave. Fury offered me this mission and I didn't feel like I could do it, but he and Laura decided she should come along. And, well… there's no one for the kids to stay with, really, and Laura got this idea in her head it might be easier for me and better for my disguise if they came along." He gave a long-suffering sigh as he resumed walking. "I shouldn't have let them, any of them, but… well, Fury went a little crazy and put about a dozen agents in the building. And I needed them still." He looked at Steve, eyes worried. "You think I'm terrible for putting them in danger."

Actually, for the moment Steve wasn't thinking about the situation in a moral light at all but a hopeful one. Clint had family. A wife and two kids. It didn't seem like he got to see them much, but… he had a _family_. A family that he kept safe, that supported him, that he loved.

Could Steve have the same?

"I… I don't know." Steve's thoughts were twisting end over end like tumbleweeds. "I understand, I think. But… A _family_ , Clint! You're really married? How do you make it work?"

The archer blinked, surprised, then smiled. "Yeah. I am. And if you tell anyone, Steve…"

"I wouldn't," he promised.

Clint stopped next to his ball and started planning his swing. "It's hard, trying to manage family and the job. It's not safe… Sometimes I hate that I ever tried to make it work. But then I go home and I remember why it's worth it."

Steve nodded. The idea was intoxicating. Clint had a family. He lived on a farm, for Heaven's sake. That had been his dream, for years. Sure, Clint wasn't as famous as he was, but the danger probably wouldn't be any greater if handled properly.

Steve dared to imagine it. A cozy, peaceful farmhouse with blue curtains to go home to after missions. A dog running around, tripping him up, with three or four little girls following closely after. No one nearby to bother them or question him about his past, but no shirking his responsibility either. There was a woman too, in the kitchen, outside on the porch, in the garden, playing with the girls, watching TV, laughing at him. She had Natalie's red hair. The fantasy was so real Steve could almost smell the fresh air and new paint.

He stopped himself there. It was a tantalizing future, but also a nearly impossible one. And, in all honesty, he was embarrassed to be thinking like that. Natalie was a friend. It wasn't doing him any favors to keep hoping otherwise.

"Hey, Rogers?" Clint was chuckling. Oops.

"Nice hit," he said automatically.

"Steve, I overshot the green pretty badly."

Oops again. Steve winced. "Sorry, I was-"

His friend grinned, shook his head, and pointed with his club. "Let's just play, man. I'm not gonna tease you this time. Although I fully expect to be the first to hear about it once you're engaged."

Steve sighed and looked away, trying not to grin too broadly. Strange how sometimes it felt like he had Bucky back when he was with Clint. Probably because Clint was also an insufferable little shit.

…

"Who do you work for?"

Steve could never quite make himself watch while Ward questioned people. It wasn't that he hadn't seen or experienced worse, it was just that Ward was a hard, brutal man sometimes and Steve couldn't condone everything he did in search of answers.

He didn't hear what was said in response, but he did hear the low threat Ward murmured, vicious and heavy with warning. Steve closed his eyes, his back turned on the investigation behind him so they couldn't see his disapproval.

They'd raided a dull, dingy basement underneath a bank in pursuit of a group of internationally known hackers. The group had a worrying tendency to pull security camera footage and files from places they shouldn't have been able to, so it was determined that they needed to be shut down. Ward had found them the lead and got them here, Steve was just along for the trip. As Ward himself put it, "a little hired muscle never hurts."

Nothing degrading about _that_.

The man suddenly screeched in pain and Steve stiffened, gritting his teeth and turning around. Ward lowered a knife, a new line of blood tracing around their prisoner's eye and down his face. "Let's try that again, shall we? Who do you work for?"

The prisoner just whimpered, eyes closed. Then he responded with a short string of Russian syllables that Steve couldn't quite understand. "Krasnaya komnata. Ya rabotayu na krasnaya komnata."

"In English," Ward said softly, threateningly. "My Russian's a little rusty."

So was Steve's.

"The Red Room. I work for the Red Room. We were watching the widow. That was our mission here."

Ward frowned, then quickly stood. "Good enough. We're taking you into custody."

Steve stepped forward. "Hang on. What widow? Who's that? Why would you dedicate so many resources to watching one person?"

The prisoner grinned brokenly. "Razve vy ne znayete, kapitan?" He laughed a little. "Malen'kaya chernaya vdova, kotoruyu ty derzhish' tak blizko k sebe. Ona unichtozhit tebya. Nadeyus' vy gotovy."

Steve didn't understand a word of the mocking, guttural sentences, but Ward seemed to, because he scowled darkly and kicked the prisoner in the chin with a sharp, fierce movement. "Wait." Steve crossed his arms. "What was that? Who's the widow? What'd he say?"

"It doesn't matter. I've heard all I need. We can go now."

Steve waited for Ward to explain further, but true to form, the agent went about his business without paying any more attention to Steve. The Captain felt a sudden rush of frustration. He'd earned better than Ward's contempt, time and again. He was tired of feeling like a burden when he did so much work to get them the information they needed.

"Maybe you heard everything you needed to, Agent Ward, but I still don't know what's going on or why we even raided this place. What did we just find out?" Steve spoke louder than he typically did, letting himself be frustrated. He let Ward take the lead because Ward was the more experienced agent, but when had that entitled him to keep Steve in the dark and on unequal footing?

Ward turned, looking irritated. "They've been spying on our agents for a while. We think 'the widow' is a codephrase for the group of people they watch, but we couldn't figure out who they worked for. We've got them now though, so we'll figure it out. Nothing left to worry about."

Steve wasn't totally satisfied with that answer, but it was good enough. For now.

"Look, Cap, why don't you head home," Ward said lightly. "I can take care of the rest of this and you can have the rest of the day off."

Steve would have disagreed but he had plans to hang out with the Bartons and Natalie that evening, and he wanted time to get cleaned up beforehand. Anyway, he was tired of dealing with Ward. "Alright," he said, nodding. He turned and walked out of the basement.

…

Clint made sure to arrive at Steve's apartment early that night with his family, before Natalie did. He told his kids to remember that his job was a secret and to not tease Natalie or Steve. Then he and Laura helped Steve finish arranging the simple dinner on the table while the two kids sat awkwardly on his couch whispering to each other.

Natalie showed up not much later, smiling shyly. Steve introduced her to Clint and Laura by their aliases, and then Laura gently introduced her shy children to Nat.

In a moment, both Nat and the kids were at ease with each other as they gossiped about Captain America and the other Avengers. Natalie explained that Steve was her favorite Avenger, which gave him a strange feeling of warmth.

Stranger still was the hopeful fluttering in his chest at the sight of Nat engaging with Charles and Lily so easily, as if she had never done anything else. It sharpened the dream that he'd been trying to force out of his mind for a long time, the image of him and Nat happy, far away from wars and crowds.

"Hey, Steve, you good?" Clint asked him quietly. Steve realized he'd been standing in silence for some time staring at Nat and the kids. He would've expected Clint to tease him, but his friend seemed to have noticed that Steve was feeling lost.

"Yeah," he managed, smiling. "Yeah, I'm alright. We should go ahead and eat; I'm starved."

He'd made spaghetti, because it was pretty easy to make and delicious, and he felt self-conscious as he sat down with everyone else. He didn't know what they'd think of the food or whether it was really any good.

"Dig in," he said cheerfully, privately saying grace, then he watched Laura serving Lily and Charles with a higher level of anxiety than he'd previously thought himself capable of. The kids started eating and, although they didn't seem thrilled by the food, they did seem to be enjoying it. Good enough.

Steve focused on eating his own food at that point. He needed to stop overthinking this kind of thing – it was food, not rocket science. And it was pretty good, anyway.

Natasha confirmed that a moment later with a small smile and the comment, "You've been practicing. No wonder you haven't been coming to the diner as often." Steve felt himself blushing, both from the compliment and from embarrassment over his attempts to avoid her.

"Thanks. Figured I oughta start listening to you more often."

Nat winked at him and he had to look down at his food real fast.

Clint and Laura managed to distract him with small talk about their lives, most of which he suspected was untrue, but the way they looked at each other and the way the kids acted made him jealous nonetheless.

"Lily is a tremendous dancer," Laura said, smiling fondly at her daughter, who was quick to look down and fiddle with her fork, blushing. "Her teacher says she can go on pointe soon, too, if you know what that is."

"Yes." Steve looked over at Natalie, surprised by the strained quality to her voice. She looked a excited, but her eyes had glazed over a bit. "Yeah, I used to do ballet."

"Really?" Lily leaned forward, suddenly thrilled and eager to talk. "Were you good?"

"One of the best," Nat said cheekily, but Steve still didn't like the look on her face. He couldn't understand what about dance could make her so tense.

Lily's eyes were wide as saucers. "Really?"

"Yeah, I got to dance in Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, all the classics," Nat said.

"Can you show me?"

"It's… it's been a while."

Clint seemed to finally catch onto the fact that Nat didn't love the topic, because he gently told Lily to finish her food and changed the topic to a recent action movie he'd seen. The rest of their evening together passed smoothly, until Laura and Clint said they probably needed to put the kids to bed and said their goodbyes. Natalie lingered after they left, comfortable on his couch with a glass of wine. Steve wasn't sure what to do with himself, suddenly.

"You've been busy lately," she said nonchalantly.

"Um. Yeah." Steve nodded and tried not to look too awkward.

"Did I do something?" She looked down, sounding worried. "I mean, come on, Steve, you were definitely avoiding me. Why?"

 _Shit._ Steve had never meant to make her feel like she'd made him mad, but… what was he supposed to do? He didn't know what to do anymore, that was all he could think of. "No, um… You didn't do anything. You just almost died, is all."

"Oh."

Steve didn't like how she said that. "Look, I just couldn't think of anything to do," he said anxiously, sitting down on the couch next to her. "I'm not… I didn't want people targeting you because you knew me, I didn't want anyone to hurt you again. I mean… You've had enough problems in your life, you don't need me adding to them."

Natalie smiled wryly, eyes somewhat bitter. "Of course you thought that. How are you this good, Steve, no one else is this good to me. Also how are you this stupid?"

Steve laughed, not sure whether to be offended or saddened or flattered or all three. "Thanks?"

She shook her head at him. "I can't pretend I'm not mad you avoided me, Steve, but I get it. I'm going to be fine though, okay?"

"I know, I just, worried," he said, lamely, awkwardly. Nat grinned at him, a happy, teasing little grin, and like an idiot, he blurted, "Why didn't you like it when Lily started asking about ballet?"

She shut down in the blink of an eye, smile going all shiny, laughing tilted up in too much amusement, shaking her head, sipping her wine, and Steve knew as she started answering that she was lying, that she was just acting. "I did ballet for a while, like I said, and I was really good at it. Then I got injured and had to stop dancing, that's all. It sucked, but it isn't a big deal, I just get sensitive, I guess."

"I don't-" Steve hesitated. "Don't get me wrong, but I don't think you're being very honest with me. Which is okay!" he hastened to add, "but-"

She kissed him. She was looking at him like he'd surprised her and then suddenly her hand was on his neck and she was almost in his lap and she was kissing him like no one had, not in his two other experiences _(and this felt like a betrayal somehow, like it had the first time a woman kissed him)_ , and she tasted like wine and he wanted it but also. He recognized a distraction when he saw one and he was quick (but not as quick as he should have been) to take her by the shoulders and push her gently away from him. It wasn't hard, she was small and she didn't fight him.

"Why-" he started, searching for words, trying to express how he wished she hadn't done that, how he wished she'd do it again. He couldn't find any, so he trailed off and looked down, not letting go of her shoulders, as if he was afraid she'd disappear.

"I'm sorry, I thought..." Nat sounded so tentative, so scared. "I thought maybe you felt like I did, I thought... I thought you wanted that too?"

"Hell, Natalie." Steve looked up again, running a hand through his hair. What to even say. "I did- I do, but... Hell. Not like that."

"Oh." Natalie shrugged her shoulders, and he reluctantly let go. "I just... It seemed right."

"No," Steve said. "You kissed me because I was making you uncomfortable. You wanted me to shut up." He didn't try to keep the accusation out of his voice. He felt as if Natalie had cheated him, somehow. His last kiss had been with Peggy, and he was hardly prepared to go around as people did now, kissing just anyone for just any reason.

And _what the hell._ Natalie just kissed him.

"So what if I did?" she asked sharply.

"That's not- I don't want you kissing me just because you don't want me talking!"

Nat recoiled, then turned away. "Well, what do you want then?"

"I… I don't know." _Something special_ , Steve thought. Hell, he hadn't even been sure he wanted this with her. "I wanted you to be honest with me. I don't even know what I want anymore, Nat, you can't- I don't-"

"Oh."

Shit, he was doing this all wrong. How could he fix this? He sort of wanted this, her, whatever they would be, but it scared him and it felt like forgetting Peggy's memory and he wasn't sure how to say all that.

She stood up from the couch, clutching her wine glass still. Sighing, she shook her head. "I can't do this, Steve. I can't just-"

"Okay, no, you stop." Steve stood too, grabbed her free hand. "I didn't do anything to you. You kiss me to stop me asking about you, then expect me to be okay with it and just go with the flow?"

"Nothing can be simple with you, can it?" she snapped, eyes blazing. "I just don't want to talk about my ballet experience, okay? That's all!"

"Why didn't you just say that? Instead of kissing me as a, a _distraction_. That wasn't fair, Natalie!" Steve felt irrationally furious. Why was she getting angry? She was the one who tried to distract him with the one thing he'd been unknowingly dreaming about for the past month.

"I-" She stopped. "I just… I don't know."

Steve sighed, let go of her hand, and rubbed his forehead. "Just… I'm sorry."

He didn't know what else to say, and apparently neither did she. When he glanced at her, he was confused to see a pained, almost tearful look on her face.

"I didn't know what to do," she said softly, honestly. "I just wanted… I don't know. You care so much, Steve. People don't… people haven't cared that much."

"Oh." He looked down.

She touched his hands, wine glass set down somewhere. "Can I… Can we try again?"

Steve laughed nervously and shrugged, unsure what else to do. So Natalie stepped in closer, tilted her face and smiled at him. "Come on, I don't bite. Usually."

That was not helping his sudden nerves, but he nodded a little. "Right." He made himself move, set one hand on her shoulder and stroked her soft hair with the other. The second kiss was much gentler, Natalie surprisingly tentative, still tasting of wine. Her hands were gentle on his biceps, and he watched her eyes, watched her smile at him and then close them. She had on silvery eye makeup.

Suddenly she backed away, and Steve didn't know what to do with that any more than he had with the original kiss. "Steve, I- Shit. I should go, I just remembered, there's a- I have to give Liho supper, and I- Shit. If I- Can you-?" She shook her head, hard, turned, and almost ran to the door, stuffing her feet into her shoes.

"Wait, Nat, what-?" Steve pushed himself to move, to go to her, to reach for her arm – which she yanked out of his reach. "I'm sorry! What did I do? What's wrong?"

She laughed, short, angry, harsh, and shook her head. "It's not you, Rogers. It's fine. We're fine. Talk to you later, okay?"

"Nat!" He grabbed for her again, but she opened the door, smiled mockingly at him, and darted outside, closing it again in his face.

He yanked it open, saw her disappearing down the hall, and charged after her. He stopped, though, at the top of the stairs, and slammed the heel of his hand into the wall. What had he done this time? Why couldn't just one thing go right for him, just one thing? Pathetically, he couldn't help but wonder if he was really that bad a kisser. He went back to his apartment and slammed the door, wanting to scream and shout and hit something. She couldn't just talk to him, she couldn't just stay and kiss him again, she couldn't just _be honest_?

This was his fault. He just had to ask her about something she clearly didn't want to talk about, had to get angry at her. Why didn't he just let things go, just leave her alone, just enjoy it when one thing went right.

Because she'd been distracting him. And maybe she never would have kissed him if she hadn't wanted him to be quiet. He couldn't stand that.

But he couldn't understand why she'd so suddenly decided to leave. Maybe it had reminded her too much of her ex-husband? Maybe she really didn't care that much about him? Maybe he'd somehow crossed some line.

He didn't know what to think except that he wanted her to come back so he could apologize her. So he texted her.

 **Nat, I'm sorry. Whatever happened, I want to fix it.**

 **Come on, Nat, what's wrong?**

 **Just talk to me, I'm not gonna judge**

 **Natalie I didn't mean to ask about the ballet thing like that. I just wanted to help.**

 **Okay really though, am I that bad of a kisser**

 _Chill out, babe, it's fine. ;) It was a good kiss, wanna meet up tomorrow for coffee?_

 **Um**

 **Sure?**

 _Why so uncertain?_

 **You're giving me whiplash tonight**

 _I know, I'm sorry_

 _I just don't know what to do with all this, it's been a long time. It's hard._

 **I'm sorry**

 _Don't be, this is my problem. It'll be okay._

Steve sighed and said he had to go to bed. He did. Because tomorrow. Tomorrow he had a date with the most beautiful woman in 21st century America. That thought was exciting enough to make him smile, despite how he suddenly wondered how good this whole situation was.

However wonderful Nat's kisses and smiles were, he wasn't sure he wanted it like this. Why, he couldn't quite say, but something about this evening left him feeling off-balance and lost.

* * *

 **A/N: So it's been like six months? Or more? Since I last posted? I am so sorry. I have a lot of stories, I'm in college, Idk. I got writer's block. Anyway, here's this. Nat is super confused, so is Steve, everything is just a litttttttle bit strange.**

 **Let me know what you think?**


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